Global Dreams and Local Things

By on Mar 26, 2014

More I have a problem. A couple of months ago, my first book was published and that meant some changes for me. Mainly, it meant more—more Twitter followers and mentions, more emails in my inbox each morning, more status, more praise, more criticism, more requests, more hits when you make the amateur mistake of googling your name. More. And yet while the “more” piled, there were two things I didn’t get any more of: time and energy.   Across the Pond! A few weeks back, someone at my church asked if they could come and meet with me. I got in front of my calendar on Monday and saw that my week was slammed. I told him I couldn’t meet that week. A few days later, I was doing a radio interview about the book with a show based in London. I couldn’t help but take a little pride in it—talking about my book to someone “across the pond”! I finished with the interview and all I could think about was the person I had refused to meet with so I could do book stuff instead. And in that moment, I felt a little prick of guilt. It wasn’t the nauseating, pit in your stomach sort. It was more like guilt was tapping me on the shoulder, inviting a conversation. This is what guilt told me.   No Lasting Remembrance First, the “world” doesn’t need you—your thoughts, your ideas, your book. You name it, the world doesn’t need it. It was doing fine without it and will be long after you’re gone. That’s not to say it isn’t good or couldn’t be a blessing, but let the visions of grandeur return to the dust from which you came and will return. Say it with me, Austin: My [fill in the blank] will not echo into eternity, and even if it blooms into something many gaze upon and appreciate, it will all too soon whither and be no more. As wise Solomon once said, “There is no lasting remembrance of even the wise man.”   Locality Second, you are a local thing. That should be intuitive but since you’ve grown up listening to a story in which everyone is a member of a “worldwide community”, it might sound a bit strange. Well ponder in amazement, but while technology has greatly enhanced our ability to know and influence the wider world, we are still walking piles of dirt that can only inhabit a tiny speck of reality. You may harbor global dreams, but you’re an inescapably local thing. Your mind and ambitions can transverse the globe but your feet will always occupy one square foot of earth at a time. The fact that you can exercise massive amounts of influence and authority over people outside your actual locale does not necessarily mean you should. Brueggemann says it well:   “…the world is not available to us…it mocks our pitiful efforts at control, mastery, and domination. How odd that to leave off our anxious pursuit of domination, an act that seems like a loss of control, is only to acknowledge that the world is not ours, cannot be ours, and need not be ours.”[1]   A Theology of Locale I think my guilt had a point. While becoming too insular and hoarding resources that others could use is a massive problem, much harm is done when we build a Babel and persistently outreach our locality under the guise of the greater world needing something from us. I think a theology of locale would do us all some good. In the church, perhaps a robust theology of locale would help cultivate leaders and artists whose highest aspiration is (gasp!) to share their work with their community. Such a novel idea! Believing there is no higher call than sharing your best stuff with your community. Believing that God can be trusted to resource self-sustaining communities that don’t need to outsource all their work to the few elites who have the real goods. Believing that if you live a life of small faithfulness, loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself, you’ve done all God asked you to do. Let go of your global dreams and be a local thing. By the grace of God, I’m trying to walk that tightrope between blessing the wider world with whatever meager gifts I have to offer, while giving my best stuff to the actual people around me. I hope you are too. Here are a few orienting thoughts that might help you embrace the dirt under you, the people in front of you, and the community around you.   -Surrender to your littleness. -Make sure you’re giving your best stuff to your community. -Spend more time loving the person in front of you than you do worrying about faceless masses you’ll never meet. [1] Walter Brueggemann, Texts Under Negotiation,...

Dear John Piper

By on Mar 7, 2014

So I wake up this morning to find John Piper has posted a video with some thoughts on my book. [Full disclosure: if you’ve read the book, you know Piper had a huge impact on my life and I still have immense respect for him. So hearing him talk about the book was surreal.] Even though I was sure the book would convert him :)…go figure, it didn’t, and he had some sharp things to say. He was particularly miffed because he felt I had misrepresented Jonathan Edwards, claiming Edwards thought and taught God was a black hole that needs human worship. A few thoughts…     This is a tricky subject, but I feel the way Piper handled it misrepresented me more than I may or may not have represented Edwards. The nub of the issue is this: I don’t think Edwards or Piper think God is a black hole that needs human worship (a vacuum cleaner, as Piper says)—period, honest to God, cross my heart, scout’s honor. I worship and serve alongside many Calvinists at my church and I know they don’t think that about God. What I say is that when I traced out Edwards’ logic and thought the things Edwards thought about God, I felt forced to believe God was a black hole that seemed to need to create in order to display all of his attributes (after all, how do you display wrath and justice without a creation?). There’s a huge difference here and throughout the book I go out of my way to make this concession: this is what I felt compelled to believe as a Calvinist and isn’t what all Calvinists believe. So while Piper says I should be “ashamed” for misrepresenting Edwards, what I hear is that I should be ashamed for not agreeing with Edwards. And that makes me sad.     To turn the tables, most firm Calvinists I know think Arminianism (or anything that’s not Calvinism) inevitably leads to semi-pelagianism. They feel that if they were Arminians, they would feel forced to be semi-pelagian. Fair enough. I very much disagree, but I understand what they’re saying and can respect that. I’m not going to wag the Protestant papal finger of shame at them and claim they think I think my works get me into heaven and are ignorant and have egregiously misrepresented me. They’re just saying they would feel compelled to believe that if they believed what I did. Again—fair enough. Reasonable, biblical, orthodox minds can look at the same picture and see different things. We’ve done it since Jesus walked out of the tomb. As someone who’s not a fundamentalist, that’s my conviction.     Did I say some sharp things in the book? Yes. Too sharp? I hope not, but I’m not above that criticism. But did I misrepresent Edwards? I’m under no illusion that I understand Edwards perfectly (who can!?), but I don’t think I misrepresented him. This is what I think happened and what I trace out in the book. I sat and watched the meticulous picture of God that Edwards and Piper painted. I loved so many of the strokes and colors. They finished painting, stepped back and said, “What a masterpiece! The manifold excellencies of the glory of God, displayed in the doctrines of grace.” I stepped back and said, “I really want to see that!…but I’m afraid I see a black hole instead.”     So Dear John, I appreciate so much of what you do and what you did in my life in a formative time. I think you’re a theological force of nature. I think your ministry brings glory to God. I think you believe in an infinitely glorious and beautiful God who loved you enough to die for you. I don’t think you believe God is a black hole—honest to God, cross my heart, scout’s honor. But as much as I didn’t want to and as hard as I tried, when I stepped back from the picture of God you and Edwards painted and took it all in, I didn’t see what you saw. I saw a black hole. I’m truly sorry if you feel I implied you and Edwards believe God is a needy black hole. I know you don’t believe that, so if that’s what you feel I said, I apologize. I’m not sorry that I (along with many others) look at the picture you paint, can’t ignore the reprobate, can’t reconcile it with lots of Scripture, can’t reconcile it with a good God who looks like Jesus crucified for the whole world, and can’t help but see a black hole. I can agree to disagree. Hopefully you can too. Grace and Peace Brother,...

Conversations with the Damned

By on Feb 24, 2014

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be responding, directly and indirectly, to some questions and thoughts surrounding the book. In the next couple of posts, I’ll address the (insinuated criticism) that I rejected Calvinism because I didn’t really understand it. I think I rejected Calvinism because I did understand it and I think more young evangelicals would reject it if they did too. I’ll trace this out more in later posts, but here’s a good starting point. Conversations with the Damned “The decree is dreadful, I confess.” –Calvin, Institutes 3.3.7, 955 My journey out of Calvinism started when I heard whimpering in the basement.   I loved the theological home Calvinism had given me. Smooth, clean lines. Lots of history and detailed architecture. Everything has a place. It put me in my place and God in his place—at the center of the universe. I pictured myself at the great eschatological banquet, enjoying the party and gorging on the food!   But there it was again. A noise coming from the basement.   It was where we Calvinist kept the damned. Following many esteemed teachers, I had told myself they were there because they deserved it and God ordained it for his glory (more on this in later posts). Many people can leave it there, but I’ve always been curious, so even as a good Calvinist, I would peek inside and talk with them.   What I found down there was one hell of a problem, and while it didn’t instantly make me walk away from Calvinism (I’d say Calvinism was my home for around 5 years), it certainly made me lose my appetite for it. I went to Calvin for help and discovered I wasn’t crazy—he himself said God’s ordination of the reprobate to hell was “dreadful.”   To this day, I completely understand why people opt for Calvinism. I just don’t understand how it doesn’t make them a bit nauseous, at least from time to time.   It’s Dreadful So following Calvin and my own time as a Calvinist, I’d suggest this: if you nuance and euphemism-to-death the doctrine of reprobation to the point that you don’t stand back from it and with Calvin say, “It’s dreadful, it’s terrible”, then you don’t understand it, you don’t get it, you haven’t been honest about it.   In my opinion (and speaking from my own journey and feedback I’ve received on the book), many of the young evangelicals who have signed off on Calvinism have not read the fine print of the reprobate, they haven’t conversed with the damned—they’re too busy enjoying the glory party. They have not faced what awaits them in the basement of their Calvinist home. Their teachers have not been upfront with them. They have not reached the place where they step back and say, “It’s terrible.”   I don’t like telling people what they can and can’t believe, but I’d suggest that if you want to be a faithful, honest, consistent Calvinist, you need to have a thorough conversation with the damned. You need to reach the place where you look at reprobation and say, “It’s terrible.” Before you rejoice in God’s electing mercy towards you, stand before the damned and lose your appetite, if only for a second.   If you can’t do that, then I stand with Calvin: You don’t understand Calvinism....

Black Holes

By on Feb 10, 2014

Here’s the Introduction to the book (Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed…used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers…wipfandstock.com), and a peek into the reason why black holes are mentioned in the subtitle!   Gravity When a big star dies, a remarkable thing happens.[1] Its own gravity crunches it until it becomes a small core of infinite density—matter squeezed together so tightly the known laws of physics cease to exist. The dead star now has a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. And at this point, the dead star has become a black hole, and everything within its reach is dragged towards its center. It can swallow planets, stars, and even other black holes. Get too close and you’ve bought a one-way ticket on a journey to the center of a black hole. Its gravity is irresistible. Gravity is an integral part of human life. It doesn’t take us long to learn that what comes up must come down. And it’s not as if anyone enforces gravity—it just is; a physical force to be accepted and not conquered. Gravity is also a spiritual force in the sense that we humans find ourselves drawn to things beyond our control. We are constantly sucked in to things—a job, a person, a hobby, an addiction. But of course if you really put spiritual gravity under the microscope, you see that the thing we are being sucked in to is ourselves. We are black holes—walking, talking pits of narcissism, self-pity, and loneliness, pillaging the world around us in a desperate attempt to fill the void inside us. Unless something is done, you will spend the rest of your existence as a human black hole, eternally collapsing in on self in a tragic effort to preserve self. It’s bad news. But Christians believe there is good news that is better than the bad. We believe something has been done—that through the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has done what we could not do ourselves. We no longer have to live under the crushing gravity of self because where sin and selfishness abounded, grace now abounds all the more. It certainly is good news, but…   Options for the Restless Leave it to us to take something so beautiful and other-centered and turn it into something (you guessed it) about us. The universe-altering message of the gospel becomes a message about me: Jesus died so I could be happy and comfortable forever and ever. While this may pass for gospel in many circles, there is a growing swell of opposition to it in many others—a recognition that such thin, therapeutic, self-centered expressions of Christianity lack the gravitas to hold a human life together, much less make it thrive. A crowd of voices calls us out of consumerism, moralism, and skepticism and into sacrifice, risk, and commitment. And for those who are restless for more, Neo-Calvinism[2] often appears as the strongest—and perhaps only—alternative for thinking biblical people. It offers the new center of gravity that can finally draw us away from self. Such was my conviction, and I still believe Neo-Calvinism is a strong alternative to cultural Christianity. But I believe we best say yes to God’s glory and sovereignty by saying no to Calvinism. I believe that I—along with many others, past and present—have found an even better option. It’s not new, and it’s not novel; indeed I would argue it is simply the historic consensus of the church. But correctly understood, it offers the greatest hope for a restless church. Unlike Calvinism, it doesn’t replace the black hole of self with the black hole of deity, making both God and the Bible impossible (more on that later); however, it does offer an infinitely glorious God, a crucified Messiah, and a cross-shaped call to follow Jesus.   Egotistical Sincerity These are my convictions, and anyone with convictions faces a dilemma: would you rather be convincing or honest? Is it more important to get people to agree with you or to honestly present the best of worthy options? While I have certainly tried to be convincing, I think the truth is best served when we are honest, and so I have also tried to be honest. And the best way I have found to be honest is to tell you my story: a journey in and out of Calvinism. As Chesterton once confessed, sometimes you have to be egotistical if you want to be sincere.[3] In this reminiscing, something became clear: theology and biography belong together.[4] We try to make sense of God as we try to make sense of our own stories, our own lives. As such, theology is meant for participants, not spectators. I write as a participant and not a spectator in the hopes it will help you become a better participant in your own theological journey, wherever it takes you. These things said, let the journey begin. Only it can’t quite begin without two quick detours.   Detour #1: The Wrong Girl I once had a friend who was convinced the wrong girl was the right girl. He thought she hung the moon while walking on water and while I thought she was nice and all, I was convinced there was someone out there better for him. Whether I was right or wrong isn’t the point—the point is that when I talked with him about...

A Purple Proposal

By on Jan 29, 2014

Primary Colors Life explodes with color—the blazing orange of sunrise, the dusty brown of a potato, the quiet black of midnight. You open your eyes, you get out of bed, and each day is a new show. Today you will see a color you didn’t know existed—perhaps it’s a new shade of yellow or some concoction of navy and pine-needle green. If you’re paying attention, life is a streaming revelation of color. And with such variety at our fingertips, it would be a shame to only dabble and primary colors—and yet we do. There is blue and there is red. There is liberal and there is conservative. Deep down, we know better, but the allure of primary colors is irresistible. Paint the world in primary colors and it all gets simple and certain. Most of us will nail honesty to a cross for a little peace of mind. And ours is a time when a little peace of mind is a precious commodity. I suppose life has always been complex, but it feels peculiarly so right now. So assaulting the world with blue and red spray-paint feels sooo good. It’s little wonder these primary colors have also tagged the walls of evangelical Christianity. Don’t hear that the wrong way—I don’t much care about doom and gloom pronouncements and I don’t know that now is any worse than then. But I know primary colors when I see them, and in my tribe they are everywhere. And I find that unacceptable because the church tells the truth. And the truth is that blue and red spray-paint will not do because we believe God is God and humans are humans. And when that belief becomes operative and active, everything gets purple.   Purple Theology Purple happens when you mix blue and red. Purple theology happens when we try to tell the truth about God instead of trying to make ourselves feel safe and certain. It happens when we surrender to the comedy of theology: we are humans talking about God. If you don’t get the joke, try a little harder. Purple theology handles life and faith with nuance instead of bludgeoning them until they bruise blue or bleed red. All that to say, purple theology believes that humility is more than good manners—it’s good theology. Its ultimate goal is not to get along but to do good, honest theology. And yet if we do good theology we will get along (or at least get along better!) because good theology will always carry the purple banner of humility—a banner that signals our surrender to the high and holy joke of theology.   A Purple Proposal So here’s my purple proposal. The church is a community of little people bumping up against a big God—let’s act like it! Let’s splatter primary colors against the wall, make a mess, and see what happens when they mix. Let’s be bold in our beliefs and passionate in our discipleship but ruthlessly honest about our finitude and uncertainty. We’ll still disagree on plenty of things—some of them important and, perhaps, worth fighting over. Our primary colors will differ. There will be lots of shades of purple—Calvinist, Arminian, Open Theist, New Pauline, Old Pauline, inerrant, infallible, inspired, inspiring, pre-mill, post-mill, who-gives-a-mill—and not all will be equal. But I can deal with that, because it tells the honest to God, purple truth of the matter. I’m busy experimenting with my own shade of purple. Its primary colors are God’s searing generosity and our tragic/comic littleness. I’ve changed shades before and might change again, but this one feels good on me. Feel free to try it...

Theological Pretention

By on Nov 22, 2013

“Theology is the study of God and his ways. For all we know, dung beetles may study us and our ways and call it humanology. If so, we would probably be more touched and amused than irritated. One hopes that God feels likewise.”[1] Pretention and Certainty “And you think your stuff doesn’t stink.” The adage is crass but the problem it highlights is crass: pretention. There are few things more repulsive than pretention. The teenager who knows it all, the sports fan who has never lost an argument, the theology major who has unlocked all the mysteries of the universe. An hour locked in a room with any of the aforementioned persons is enough to make the strongest heart weak. And lots of things go into pretention: pride and projection, arrogance and insecurities, knowledge and ignorance. But at its very core pretention feeds on certainty, especially theological pretention. We get pretentious when we get certain, when we become convinced that there is simply no way we are wrong about this, when we cannot see any truth in alternative positions, when we can no longer feel the weight of dissenting voices and as such seek to squelch them out. But of course when it comes to theology, certainty is impossible. Finite human beings are trying to make sense of an infinite God. We always know God subjectively, never objectively. Perhaps the most certain thing we can say about God is that we cannot be certain about anything. This is not to say we cannot be confident, that we cannot have good reason to believe what we believe. But it is to say that certainty will always lie just beyond our grasp. Certainty? No. Confidence? Yes.   Bad Tone and Bad Theology In my estimation, the tone of modern American evangelical theological rhetoric belies a furious but ultimately impossible and misguided attempt for certainty. Allow me to speak from my context and experience. The Young, Restless, and Reformed movement and its vast web of associates (The Gospel Coalition, Sovereign Grace Ministries, Acts 29 Network, Passion Conferences, etc.) have experienced unbelievable growth and gained unbelievable influence. And yet for many who have ears to hear, it often strikes the shrill chord of pretention. I used to be young, restless, and reformed. I understand why people embrace five or four point Calvinism. I see how they look at Scripture and think it teaches unconditional election and irresistible grace. And I see how they find any sort of free will theism problematic. Where do free decisions come from if not from God? How else do you translate Romans 9? I get it. I get how they could think it stinks. What I don’t get is how they don’t smell, well, their own stink. How is God good, just, or loving in creating people for eternal damnation for sins he ordained they commit? Is Calvinism truly Christocentric? Are the emphases of the Gospels the emphases of Calvinism? How do we make sense of the thousands of places in the Bible that implore us to make decisions on the apparent assumption that we actually can or can’t? How is human moral responsibility coherent in a determinist framework? I’m not saying there aren’t answers to these questions. I am saying that to me (and many others) they all stink. I’m ok with acknowledging that some of my answers to difficult questions stink (or will stink to others). And I’m ok with it because while I hold my beliefs with a great deal of confidence, I know I cannot hold them with certainty. Many in the YRR (and especially its leaders) just don’t seem to be able to smell the scent they’re putting off. They are just…so…certain. And they seem to think this certainty is a sign of knowledge and authority. Perhaps it’s just a sign of bad theology.   Transcending Transcendence What is perhaps most ironic is that Calvinist theology has traditionally had a heavy emphasis on the transcendence of God. God is said to be so beyond human comprehension that we have no right to call into question his goodness, justice, or love, even in light of the reprobate. God operates on a plane for which there is little analogy. But if God is indeed so transcendent, how can they be so certain with their beliefs? Is TULIP an exception to God’s transcendence? Free will theism is often accused of belittling God’s transcendence, of forgetting how holy and other God is. And yet Neo-Calvinism appears to do far worse: it attempts to transcend God’s transcendence. This lies at the heart of theological pretention and the culture of certainty for where transcendence is honored, certainty and thus pretention are deflated and humility grows its roots. Though I disagree with Calvinism, Calvinism isn’t the problem. The problem is theological pretention, which has become a dangerous bedfellow of Neo-Calvinism. Theological pretension needs to be ruthlessly stomped out but not merely because it is bad manners. It is bad theology. It is theology that has attempted to transcend transcendence. And bad theology produces bad disciples.   Theological Reconciliation In a recent edition of Christianity Today, John Piper was asked about theological reconciliation. Borrowing from Frances Schaeffer, Piper suggests that theological reconciliation might look like throwing love bombs over the walls between us instead of hate bombs. Hmmm. While throwing love bombs over walls is certainly preferable to throwing hate bombs,...

What to Make of Passion?

By on Jan 4, 2013

Hooray Excellence! At the moment I’m writing this, there are 60,000 college students gathered inside the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. They are singing worship songs, listening to sermons, and gathering what will no doubt be a massive offering that will go towards combating human trafficking. It’s pretty unbelievable stuff, but the Passion conferences specialize in the unbelievable. Cutting edge media, excellent musicians, famous speakers. If we’re going to be candid, it’s refreshing to see something “Christian” also be something of such exceptional quality. You could invite an agnostic friend to it and not blush at the prospects of asking him to pay a couple hundred bucks to attend something that feels like a home-school prom. I like excellence, you like excellence, we all like excellence, and I think Jesus does too. Hooray excellence! That said, as I was reading the tweets of a number of my students who are at Passion, a question kept bouncing around inside my head. Maybe I was asking it of God or maybe God was asking it of me—I often can’t tell the difference. But either way, the question was, “What would Jesus make of Passion?” Now I know, I know. The question is both loaded and brutally anachronistic, but it just kept asking itself to me. Spoiler alert: I have no idea what Jesus would make of Passion. But here’s some stuff I threw up against the wall. Maybe some of it sticks.   Thought #1…Temple = Georgia Dome I remember the first time I went to a Passion conference. I was a senior in high school and together with my youth pastor and a few friends, we made the trek to Sherman, Texas. And from the beginning, the trip had a certain vibe to it, a vibe I’ve since learned is the anticipation of pilgrimage. Religious pilgrimages—as far as I can tell—stretch back to the beginning of human history. There’s something primeval and elemental about the act of going on a journey to a place where we believe we will encounter something transcendent. In the Hebrew Bible, we see God commanding the Jews to make yearly pilgrimages to “appear before the Lord God” (Exodus 34:18-23). Once the Temple was built, these pilgrimages would culminate there, the place where heaven and earth came together. Indeed for a Jew, the Temple was the holiest place in the whole universe. They traveled there because God was, uniquely, there. And by way of crude parallelism, it would appear that what the Temple was for an ancient Jew, the Georgia Dome is now for many young-adult, American evangelicals. They take a yearly pilgrimage to the Dome because they feel it is a place where God is uniquely present.   “Cleansing” the Temple? So what do we make of this? The first thing that came to my mind was Matthew 21 and Jesus’ “cleansing” of the Temple. I put cleansing in quotations because contra popular belief, NT scholars point out that Jesus is not cleansing the Temple so much as he is shutting it down. Flipping over the tables of the money-changers and seats of the dove-sellers (21:12)—these are not acts of purification but condemnation. The exchanging of pagan coins for Jewish coins and the selling of animals for sacrifice were both essential for Temple worship. They Temple didn’t need rehabilitation. It needed to die. But not because God hates buildings; rather, the Temple needed to die because Jesus was replacing it. Jesus was a one-man, walking Temple; the place where heaven and earth came together and God was uniquely present to his people. As N.T. Wright says, “What the gospels offer us is a God who is in the midst [of us] in and as Jesus the Messiah…Jesus himself is the new Temple at the heart of the new creation…And so this Temple, like the wilderness tabernacle, is a temple on the move, as Jesus’ people go out, in the energy of the Spirit, to be the dwelling of God…”[1] Now from one angle it’s tempting to connect these dots. Jesus shut down the Temple because he was replacing it. The Georgia Dome has become a new Temple. Jesus would walk into the Georgia Dome and flip over the merch tables and slam Chris Tomlin’s guitar, Garth Brooks style. And while that sort of simplistic reasoning certainly won’t do, I do think it raises some interesting questions regarding the pilgrimage/Temple mentality that so clearly permeates the Passion ethos. So here go a few thoughts…   church Jesus didn’t shut down the Temple because it was evil. He shut it down because it was obsolete and no longer needed. God was doing a new thing, was making himself present to his world and his people in a new way, and the Temple didn’t have a place in this new creation. God was now present to his people through the Spirit and was present to the whole world through his Spirit-filled community = the church. And I put church in lower case on purpose. Local churches made up of normal people doing normal things…this is the God-appointed medium of God’s presence and grace to the world. Not a Temple. Not a yearly pilgrimage. And dare I say, not a trip to the Georgia Dome. To be sure, many Passion attendees love their local church and their pilgrimage to the Dome is a noble period of spiritual refreshment. But I...